novule bianche
by shiny happy fits of rage
Summary: Cassie had never been one of the chosen few whose dreams are as lucid during the daylight hours as they are at night. This luxury disappears the moment Black Beetle grips her body in his calloused hands and slams her into the frozen metal door. Prompt #596 (darkest before dawn)


**This isn't Spitfire, but it does still come from my endless supply of prompts. Humor me, okay?**

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It happens when she is alone, and she is in her room, and the darkness has blurred the sharp corners and edges of the wall into an indistinguishable cloud that cannot be penetrated. It happens when Cassie crawls under the red and white striped fleece blanket that her mother gave her six years ago for Christmas (_"To keep you warm when I can't" reads the card, and Cassie kisses her mother on the cheek and doesn't consider the impact of those words until it is too late and the world won't stop raining_). It happens when she breathes in and breathes out, and she counts to thirty and listens to the Vitamin String Quartet CD Connor gave her and thinks about nothing but the crescendo and the fall of the violins, and it happens even when she reiterates her mantra during the final moments before she loses all control. _It's over, you're safe, it's over, you're safe, it's over, you're safe, it's over, you're safe_.

Despite it all, it still happens.

Cassie had never been one of the chosen few whose dreams are as lucid during the daylight hours as they are at night. For her, dreams were flashes of sound and bright colors that never lingered for more than a pulsing second, bruises that were gone the moment she let the sun slip through her eyelashes. The charcoal grave in Gateway City Memorial Cemetery only makes the colors burn her eyes, but even after she stood over the grave, digging her heels into the grass when her uncle dragged her way, she wakes up with only the vaguest of recollections of what had occurred in the split seconds between oblivion and life.

This luxury disappears the moment Black Beetle grips her body in his calloused hands (_the ones covered in Robin's blood)_ and slams her into the frozen metal door, ruthlessly, tirelessly, mercilessly.

"Cassie," whispers Robin after they've fled, as they sit in the BioShip, hunched shoulders and an incessant dull roar in their bones. Cassie, for her part, can't breathe. Her nose is a brilliant, dripping red and it dribbles down her neck. She slouches in her chair, and stares at the ceiling and counts to thirty, over and over again. The thud, harsh and embedded with iron that will never rust, rings in her ears and she wonders why they don't bleed.

"Cassie. Cass, please answer me. You're okay, you're safe. It's over. You're safe. Are you okay? Cassie?

"I can't –"

Her powers include the ability to be highly resistant to physical damage, but she is not invincible. She has three broken ribs, they tell her at the Cave, as well as an amount of bruises so great that it is more entertaining to try to find unmarked patches of skin than it is to find the splotches of dark blue and cloudy black. Her team, despite their desensitization to bodies that have been utterly destroyed, wince when they see her, and Robin jumps every time she stumbles into a room. "I got you," he babbles as he helps her needlessly to a couch, and he forgets her bruises and squeezes her right arm too hard, and she cries out and he swears and lets go of her, and he sits too still and too far away from her shaking shoulders.

The roar echoes and it will not leave her ears. It inhabits her mind and it has made her dreams their particular home. The rumble of Black Beetle's voice as he picks her up (_weak, useless, bones that snap too easily)_ rips through her and he smiles at her without teeth as he breaks her and Robin lies on the ground and he does not stir -

_It's over, you're safe, it's over, you're safe, it's over, you're safe, it's over, you're safe, you're safe, you're safe, you're safe -_

"Cass?"

The elastic wavers and snaps, and Cassie shudders into real life with a flailing, pathetic punch. The night is infinite but Robin's eyes gleam and he doesn't back away like he does during the day, even when her fist lands on the corner of his lip. She is inexplicably crying. He reaches out and his hands, soft despite the weapons they handle, do not feel like her nightmares when he grabs her by her shoulders, and his voice stays quiet, tearing a little around the edges.

"It's me, Cassie, it's – it's Robin. I – you were yelling, and I thought… It's okay. You're okay, you're safe, you're okay, you're safe…"

He says the words over and over again until she stops crying, until she can breathe again without choking on the taste of rusty metal in her mouth (_or is it just blood_). She leans her forehead against his collar bone, and the dream does not disappear, but rather distances itself from her disarrayed brain. "You can't leave," she whispers into Robin's shoulder, into his skin, bare against her lips. "Please don't leave."

If he halts for a moment, if there is an instant where he stills and his breathing doesn't reach his heart, it is quickly compensated for with a nod that touches the top of her head, and palms that gently push her away so he can just pull her back again, closer this time, as he lies down and tugs the candy-cane blanket over his chest. She folds herself into him (_when did an awkward smile of alliance turn into almost kisses, her teeth grazing the skin near his heart as she trembles)_ and she can't help but wonder deliriously if this is just another dream that will turn into a pulse of scarlet and wind chimes when she wakes up. Of all the results of the damn door that her ribs cannot dent and the cold black hands, she never assumed one of them would be this half-real, desperate embrace with Robin in her bed as the rest of the world lay asleep.

"I guess I'm not a night person," she says. She tries to smile, but she can't convince herself to expend the energy needed to perform a task neither of them will see in the dark. The joke falls flat and stays down.

Robin, for his part, merely shrugs. "That's alright," he murmurs. "It'll be day soon, anyway."

And so she breathes, and he breathes, and at some point their hearts fall into a slow, unsteady waltz, and she slips into dreamless sleep. Not before, however, realizing that Robin isn't wearing sunglasses or a mask, and that, if she could make out his eyes through the night, they would most certainly be beautiful.


End file.
